Vainamoinen

Very excited to get the Purcell soundtrack cover confirmed – and of course to see Sam at the piano.

Well ... more than two months ... no soundtrack release on bandcamp (and no game on gog). Any good news there ... ?

I only found the first part re-used, for example in Atlantis' "crab room".

All three parts of the track (0:00 to 0:16, 0:17 to 0:45, 0:46 to end) can be heard in that sequence when Jones and Sophia first look at the Hermocrates manuscript in Jones' office, immediately before choosing a path. Starts at minute 43:00 in this youtube walkthrough.

Well, I'm definitely to blame. I didn't "show up to" any "Steam release" in my entire life. 😅 I understand Duke Nukem guy to a large degree, but the brunt of his 'advice' is easier said than done. The in jokes, the references, the slavish use of the same old formula, that's the stuff that sells. Take a look at Hollywood, heck, take a look at the game industry. The recipe that works is going into innumerable iterations. I hear even Star Trek: Resurgence did pretty well, and that's really The Walking Dead 1.01A. He's asking for larger development teams, well bad news Mister B., we have wall-to-wall game sales in the industry right now. Even in the popular genres, it seems that only two types of game developers can succeed, either a two people development army backed by a bunch of freelancers or a quadruple A 20,000 staff company desperately clinging to making the nth iteration of their most popular game. Wadjet Eye games tried 'something new', and their later games are really great point & clicks with great storylines (and ... less than great puzzles), but apart from 'the other Gilbert', I struggle to think of adventure games that aren't stuffed to the brim with references to Monkey Island. In their later years though, it seems they had lost the power to innovate. They still innovated, naturally, but the new things weren't accepted any longer. Their fans largely expected very concrete things and when these expectations were not fulfilled, bam, Grim Fandangbomb. The problem of the living legend maybe, people expect the same great things from you over and over. Back then LucasArts still had staff willing to innovate with each new games, but the audience had such fixed expectations, petrified the whole company into a statue, a memento of former greatness unable to move its arms and legs.

I'd love some updates concerning the bandcamp soundtrack release and of course the GOG release too ... I never liked Poker and I've come to actually hate crossovers during the last years. But STILL Poker Night 2 had a real spark to it, it really considered the possibilities. How about a bad guy edition for Poker Night 3 ... say, Wreck-It Ralph, Biff Tannen, LeChuck, Agent Smith, Doctor Robotnik, and/or of course Skunkape?

Still no luck on GOG. They have a national holiday in Poland today, and as any European knows, if Thursday is a national holiday, not much is going on on Fridays either. So chances are it isn't even coming this entire week. 🥺 Ah well, the good news is that I have at least 25 hours left to sink into the ridiculously addictive Steamworld Heist II which came out last week. I fully intend to write long form individual episode reviews and musings once I finally am on The Devil's Playhouse. Might be a good thing that I can't rush it. I would guess that the rights are not nearly as easily acquired as those for Sam & Max. So we'll likely never see what Flotsam Town would have looked like if it wasn't broken in two for the Wii's undersized RAM. Re-doctoring the art style of Tales game might give some folks ideas about what could be done to Return, so it might still be a good thing that it likely isn't happening. There I said it moment: Instead of another Remaster, Skunkape could do S&M Season 4.

It's out on Steam. No luck for me yet.

Yes, absolutely, it was Telltale's finest hour. That said, I might indeed be the type to slight The Walking Dead, but then again, I never liked zombies that much; the hopelessness that pervades this work kind of dragged me down; and the TTG forum culture went out the door with the advent of a gazillion hyperactive twelve year olds. Besides, if my elephant brain doesn't let me down here, the great schism of those ancient times was puzzles or no puzzles. I was a puzzle guy. The Devil's Playhouse had them. I'm looking forward to re-experience this game and to find out, without any rose tinted glasses, what this particular je ne sais quoi (with an i in the last word, mind you) actually is/was. For now, my two questions are: Soundtrack, bandcamp, when? I want to send my money flying on those heavenly wavelengths ... New lines of dialog?! Which ones? (I'd ask those P. B.s you mention, but given the cataloguing talent they've demonstrated with the last S&M remasters, I might get more accurate results asking a random six year old)

It's been said that the past had the disconcerting tendency to claw through the freshly laid soil of the present and wrap its cadaverous fingers around the entrails of the future. But sometimes, the past just peeks through that soil to give you a good long cuddle, and maybe it even stays around long enough do do great things in the future. But, while we're at it, this little quote from the past had me wondering for 13 years.

And a day one GOG release. 🥰😍 In August, I'm literally buying my first two 2024 games, and The Devil's Playhouse will be one of them. Suddenly, I won't know what to play first. This will be a wild, wild, experience for me that I haven't had in at least a decade. .... aaaand apparently the NutriSpecs are now available to all platforms.

Not that it has a chance to ever be published on a platform or service I'd use, but sure, I would play that new Indy game. My main gripes would remain: Facial animation and first person perspective.

I still have mountains of CDs lying around, and have bought the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth OST on eight discs this year. But ... I ripped those CDs and put the box on my shelf to collect dust. I don't even own a designated CD player any more. Another sign of these strange times. I'd also buy a physical release of Season 3's OST. The impulse is there. It's just less sensible every year. 😐 A larger format reprinting of the comics including "The Big Sleep" however: I'd buy three of those.

Instant + 100 beats per minute pulse. A Summer release would be off the charts awesome (well, you know what 'platform' release I'm waiting for 😬 ). And of course I'll get the soundtrack off bandcamp FTL. Hope you have that Steve Purcell cover ready ... all the new stuff from Jared ... and that speech for the folks in the Telltale forum.